Is Cereal With Milk Soup?

These are important times and sometimes it's our responsibility to ask the questions and question the answers (like in a local television news report where the investigative reporter knocks on the door and then is told to get off the property). THAT important.

We will solve a problem that, believe it or not, has been discussed on several chat forums over the years. Is cereal with milk a soup?

Your initial reaction was probably "no", possibly for some of these reasons:

1. Cereal is cold, soup is warm

Hold up Goldilocks... have you forgotten about porridge? What about oatmeal? And also, here are some cold soup recipes from Saveur. Score one for soup.

2. Cereal has milk, soup has broth

But wait, can milk be considered a broth? Someone took the time (that they had a lot of on their hands) on Quora to break this answer down nicely. In short, milk, originally a beverage is transformed to a broth once it hits the cereal bowl. In fact, here are a bunch of milk based soup recipes from Yummly. Score another one for soup.

3. Soup has to have veggies or meat products in it

According to Dictionary.com, the definition of soup is: "a liquid food made by boiling or simmering meat, fish, or vegetables with various added ingredients." This definition shuts it down, but hang on. According to a much better definition by Wikipedia, "Soup is a primarily liquid food, generally served warm or hot (but may be cool or cold), that is made by combining ingredients such as meat and vegetables with stock, juice, water, or another liquid." This definition solves all the problems. The words "but may be cool or cold" solves problem 1. The words "or another liquid" puts milk back on the table (and then into the fridge, please) and solves problem 2. And "ingredients such as" opens the door wide open, solving problem 3. Score all three for soup!

So our conclusion based on all this scientific data is that, yes, a bowl of cereal is a soup. So there is nothing here to argue about, right? Case closed. We wouldn't want any comments or for you to share this to debate with your friends on social media or anything...